Backwards Golf: In Light of These Jockeys Having a Foot Race For Charity, Here Are Other Sports I Would Like to See Inverted

This video made the rounds over the weekend. The race itself happened a few weeks ago. Sixteen wee little jockeys at an event called Jockey Fest in Lima, Peru left their horses in the barn and took to the starting gate for a 100-meter charity foot race. If you ask me, it's kinda lame they weren't forced to carry full-grown adult horses on their backs as they ran. But it was a fun visual nonetheless.

I've long had the bad sports take that once every decade, professional sports leagues should play a special season in which they try out some of the various different rules that fans are always throwing out there. For example, in basketball, I've always wanted teams to be able design the dimensions of their home court to fit their team's identity. If a team has terrible three-point shooting, they could move the three-point line closer, or eliminate it altogether. In baseball they could play a season aluminum bats. Just for the hell of. I'd love to watch a soccer season with bigger goals, so that the scores are more like 5-4 every game instead of 0-0. Or they could play with smaller nets, but have no goalies at all. Just once every ten years or so. If any of the rules turn out to be universally beloved, then maybe we could make them permanent. And think about all the great discourse we'd have surrounding players who could only "win the big one" during wacky rules year. Imagine if LeBron had won his first ring in wacky rules year? He'd have no choice but to wear Mickey Mouse ears for the remainder of his career.

But if leagues really want to get crazy, I'd like to see them take a page out of Jockey Fest's book and invert their sport entirely. I suppose that's more a job for an all-star weekend, but unless you're the NHL and are going to let your players to take  two full weeks off mid-season for an international tournament, inverting your sport for a night would surely be more entertaining than whatever terrible all-star weekend festivities they have planned. Even the MLB can't get it right anymore. They somehow took the Home Run Derby, the simplest concept in the world, and ruined it be adding a three-minute clock and turning it into a rapid fire home run-off where fans don't even have time to appreciate the home runs.

So in light of Jockey Fest, which sounds hilarious by the way. What happens at jockey fest? Do horse racing enthusiasts make the pilgrimage to Lima to get up close in personal with their favorite jockeys? Do they get to wear the costumes and take pictures on a horse? Is there an apartment set up where everything is a foot higher than it should be so fans get the experience of what it's like to live as a jockey? If I ever find myself in Peru over the summer, I'll be sure to check it out.

Other Inverted Sports Ideas:

Hockey: Swap Goalies and Skaters

Each team has five goalies skating out on the ice in full-goalie equipment, and one skater playing goalie. Maybe we let the skater in net wear a cage so he doesn't end up eating a puck, but aside from that, he has to wear his regular player's gear. 

That would be a highly entertaining game to watch. It would be high scoring. It would be much slower than regular hockey, but sometimes that's fun to watch. That's what I like about watching women's sports. Since the game is so much slower, it's easier to follow everything that's happening. You can better see plays develop, call out passes in real time, convince yourself that if you were out there you'd be dominating, things of that nature. 

It would also be fun to watch how the skater in net plays the puck. Since he's technically the goalie, he wouldn't be allowed to carry the puck past center ice, but he could still run things from his own end. Or imagine if Alexander Ovechkin tee'd up a slap shot from just beyond center ice with a skater standing alone in the opposing net? I'd certainly like to see how that plays out. 

Baseball: Swap Batters and Pitchers
This one's fairly straightforward. Sometime during All-Star Break, the MLB should play a game where position players have to pitch, and pitchers have to hit. Realistically, their skill levels would probably just cancel each other out, and it would be like watching a regular baseball game. But for this game, I think it'd be more fun to not use a designated hitter. There should be one legitimate MLB bat in the lineup who gets to face a position player every time around the order. It would make for some huge moments. 

Kicker Football:
I'm struggling to come up with a good inverse of football. Letting defense play offense and offense play defense doesn't seem exciting enough. It would be kinda fun to swap quarterbacks with receivers, so you have wide receivers airmailing passes to quarterback running slants across the middle. I'd sure love to see Daniel Jones get his head taken off by a middle linebacker.

But what if we put a heavy emphasis on kicking? We make field goals worth more points. The longer the field goal, the more points it's worth. So when your offense gets to point of a 53-yard field goal, they'd have a tough decision to make. Do you wanna go for the 50+ yard field goal for 7 points? Or do you want to try and get closer to 40-yards, and settle for 5 points? In this scenario, maybe touchdowns are with 3 points, which would be same as less than 30-yard field goal. I like imagining an NFL where kickers are the face of the league. What a stupid world that would be.

Basketball But The Hoop is Really Low
I got nothing good for basketball. I'm trying to come up with a way to keep the game the same, but make being tall a disadvantage. I'm thinking we use a three or four foot rim. Like one of those Little Tyke basketball hoops everyone had as a kid. 

Isaac Lee. Getty Images.

Imagine Victor Wembanyama trying to guard a little person scrambling around between his legs. In reality, I don't think that would play out how I want it to. The tall players could simply squat down and use their long wingspans to defend all sides of the basket. But it would be torture on their knees. Wemby wouldn't last 3 years in the Small Basketball Association. A guy like Muggsy Bogues though… what a menace he would be. 

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Reverse NASCAR
This one rules. There should be one NASCAR race a year where all drivers have to drive backwards the entire race. The big one in reverse would be crazy.

Soccer But You Can Use Your Hands
We already have that. It's Olympic Handball. 

Dog Sled Racing But It's Just Some Inuits Running Across Alaska in Snow Shoes. 
Also they're pulling a rickshaw with a Husky in it who's barking at him to go faster.

Backwards Golf (this one is good)
This is the real reason I wanted to write this blog. This idea might be impossible to execute, but I'm dying to play golf in this style someday. To create the course, we're going to need a shit load of real estate and some very conveniently placed trees. This idea legitimately might take millions of dollars to pull off, but here's how it works. You start by putting on a massive green. Putting off the tee is mandatory. Say you're playing a Par 5, here's how an ideal hole would play out for you.

Shot 1: Long putt

Shot 2: Wedge to layup area

Shot 3: Iron to an open clearing

Shot 4: Tee up a long drive towards a finish line

The hole is finish line. However many shots it takes you to get over the finish line is your score. I've created some example holes in Microsoft Paint.

I'm not exactly sure what a reasonable length for an opening putt would be. I'm thinking on an open green you could putt the ball about 100 yards? I don't know, I've never had that much green to work with, so I might be off there. But keep in mind, since this is golf in reverse, sometimes it might take two putts to get into a good position for your approach. I haven't decided yet if you should be able to pull wedge on your second shot no matter what, of if you should have to clear a certain distance with your putter before you can turn to a real club. Still working out the kinks in that department.

Here is a Par 4.

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Naturally, some holes would finish with shorter drives, but will have longer, more difficult opening putts. Other holes will be easy to get into driving position, but will likely take you two drives to cross the finish line unless you can really crush it. Some holes would be all about what to do on your approach. Much like actual golf, the possibilities are endless. Only here, they're backwards.

Here is a Par 3. I got tired of making trees so I did some mountains.

Now that I've been thinking about this all morning, I desperately need someone with the means to make this course a reality.

Alternatively, you could simply play a real golf course in reverse. You start by having to putt the ball off the green and into the fairway, then play backwards to the tee box. That way someone wouldn't have to spend millions of dollars building a gimmick course, and I wouldn't have needed to spend all that time in Microsoft Paint. But if you played backwards to the tee box, that wouldn't truly be backwards golf, because your second shot would be your longest shot, and from there you'd club down as you approach the tee. My idea is better. My idea is real backwards golf.

Ok, I don't think I'm going to top backwards golf. Dave, I'm sure you're reading this. Let's make this happen.